Kathy G, guest-blogging for Matt Yglesias, lays out a lengthy case for why Barack Obama should not pick Jim Webb as his Vice-President here. I suspect that the points she makes will prove persuasive and that Obama won’t choose Webb, not least because of concerns over his attitude towards women and gender issues generally. It’s
Are Paris Saint-Germain the worst football team in Europe? This obviously depends upon how one measures or defines “worst”. PSG, despite another appalling season, would (thankfully) still be expected to defeat, say, Shamrock Rovers. But in a pound-for-pound sense is there a more pathetic club in europe? I’s not just that they only narrowly avoided
Ezra Klein leaps into the great Jim Webb discussion to make the important point that we’ve little idea what a Webb presidency would actually be like. True enough and that’s another useful caveat. It’s also the case that Obama’s Veep may end up being a candidate for the Presidency themselves, either in 2012 or 2016.
I’ve been meaning to rave about and recommend Gene Healy’s terrific book The Cult of the Presidency for some time. Now George Will saves me the trouble of doing so. His Newsweek column this week is a useful precis of Healy’s case. Will makes the obvious point that the expectation that the President be some
Via Samizdata, this seems to be a quite appalling story. The Guardian reports that: A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the “psychological torture” he endured in custody. Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the
If you asked me where this photograph – which has not been tinkered with to any significant degree – was taken, I suspect I’d have plumped for Texas or New Mexico. But in fact it’s a peat bog and moss on the Solway plain in Cumbria that I visited when calling upon my sister last
So, as expected, the Tories win the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Handsomely. The remarkable thing is that it took so long and that the Tory brand remained so toxic that this is the first by-election gain the party has enjoyed enjoyed since Labour came to power in 1997. In fact, it’s the Tories first bye-election
Chris Woodhead, the former head of the schools inspectorate in England and Wales, argues that many private schools are, to all intents and purposes, ripping off their clients. The Telegraph observes that he has an interest to declare, but: Prof Woodhead is the chairman of Cognita, which owns a chain of profitmaking private schools and
Like Philip Salter, I dinnae often agree with Gordon Brown. But fair’s fair (especially the morning after a brutal by-election thumping), here’s some of what the Prime Minister had to say at the Google Zeitgeist conference this week: The two great protected industries of the moment are the two industries that are causing us the
Little blogging until next week as I’m visiting my sister in Cumbria today before going to the cricket at Old Trafford on Saturday. But here’s a photograph of the lower reaches of the Yarrow Valley, Selkirkshire:
How many people really think of Che Guevara as a romantic, if occasionally headstrong, revolutionary? Outside Latin America, I mean. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but does anyone under the age of 35 really give even half a damn about Che Guevara? Certainly, the anti-Che forces continue to write as though he remained a clear,
It could have been worse, I suppose. There was a proposal that you’d soon need a special license to be permitted to purchase cigarettes in Scotland. Presumably this would be accompanied by arm-twisting from “health care professionals” to persuade you to stop, or mandatory sessions with a shrink to demonstrate that you were indeed sufficiently
In one sense there’s little point in writing about Hillary Clinton anymore. She’s lost. Still, if there is any truth to the notion, much-favoured by Washington reporters, that you can gain a sense of character and, indeed, governing style from the way in which a candidate campaigns then, by gum, we should be glad that
Remember: it’s a Republic, not a Democracy. From the New York Daily News: Ted Kennedy has made clear to confidants that when his time is up, he wants his Senate seat to stay in the family – with his wife, Vicki. Multiple sources in Massachusetts with close ties to the liberal lion say his wife
Dave Weigel is going to be blogging from the Libertarian Party convention in Denver this weekend. Great copy all-but-guaranteed: We turned to the speaker schedule, and couldn’t figure out if Richard Hoagland—an author who argues that NASA is covering up evidence of dead civilizations found with their probes—was an official convention speaker. Hoagland, Latham mentioned,
Seriously: For tens of thousands of years, the birds of Gough Island lived unmolested, without predators on a remote outcrop in the south Atlantic. Today, the British-owned island, described as the home of the most important seabird colony in the world, still hosts 22 breeding species and is a world heritage site. But as a
Courtesy of Danny Finkelstein: The red line shows Labour’s approval rating since 2005, the blue John Major’s 1992-97 ministry. Nuff said. (The bulge was the brief Brown Summer in which, helped by not being Tony Blair and his calm response to terrorism, Brown was for a moment or two actually quite popular.)
American breakfasts are pretty good, or at least as fine as can be expected from a meal that doesn’t include black pudding. But there’s no doubting that the United States’ greatest culinary marvel is proper BBQ. It’s the finest American food there is. Porcine perfection. And BBQ is going international, according to this lovely piece
So, to no-one’s great surprise, the first test between England and New Zealand ended in a draw. Commendations are due Daniel Vettori for his bowling and Jacob Oram for the century that ensured England would have no chance to snatch an improbable victory. England’s pusillanimous tactics made achieving victory, however, very much more improbable than
Apologies for the (unconscionable?) delay in posting this latest installment. I know this has disappointed some of you. What can I say? Well, the truth is that Firefox ate this post and this set me back a few days as it was some time before I could muster the energy or enthusiasm to write a